The obesity is an epidemic that continues to affect us and add number of victims around the world, however, the numbers of their impact can be even more alarming if we consider that at the time, has always been used weight as an indicator of but in reality, we can not rely solely on the body mass index for its diagnosis.

Obesity: excess fat regardless of weight

Although so far the most commonly used indicator to diagnose obesity is the body mass index that relates weight to height of a person, the reality is that many people of normal weight can be metabolically obese .

And a study published earlier this year points out that up to 30% of women who according to body BMI do not have obesity, have excess body fat and therefore may have metabolic problems such as those of a person obese This is high abdominal adiposity, insulin resistance, dyslipidemia and high blood pressure as observed by Canadian scientists in people with BMI less than 25 or what is the same, with normal weight.

All this indicates that the BMI is not a good indicator of obesity , therefore, in the II Congress of Obesity and Metabolic Complications that celebrated this year in the Society for the Study of Obesity (SEEDO) and the Society of the Morbid Disease and Metabolic Disease Surgery (SECO) is questioned its usefulness.

In addition, a recent study published in Frontiers in Public Health notes that regardless of weight, 80% of adult women, 90% of men and 50% of children in developed countries have excess body fat , which undoubtedly affects health and could be defined as the true prevalence of obesity, well above the world average indicated by the OECD this year close to 20%.

Knowing this, it is important to reconsider the use of weight and BMI as the main diagnosis of obesity because, just as it can be wrong in athletes with a high degree of muscle mass, it can also greatly underestimate the incidence of this disease.

In its replacement or in an essential way together with its use, electrical bioimpedance should be used to estimate the percentage of body fat and, in addition, to evaluate the waist circumference that is a good indicator of abdominal adiposity.